It's a great day. I'm sorting through my Rubbermaids, blasting some early Covenant I've never heard before, discovering that I have a fuckton of unused, unexpired batteries. Yay. I wish you guys could smell my playa backpack. It's amaaaaazing.

Everything but my clothes leaves my hands in 39 hours. ¡w00t!

I hope everyone out there is having an awesome sunshiney productive day.

*** 2017 Survival Guide ***"I must've lost it when I was twerking at the trash fence." -- BBadger

Suffering succotash… here is what interfered with my beer-forking all afternoon & evening:

Urchins! Rascals! There were five or six of them, but they don’t stand still long enough to be counted. …Unless they are talking at me. All of them at once. In Spanglish.

One of them lives across the street, so I know him and his parents. (Wonderful neighbors.) The rest of them come from who knows how many blocks away. They can smell bicycles. At last count I had 72 such. I’m the freakin’ pied piper around here.

So I took back the bicycle I gave Hernando a few weeks ago and upgraded him to a nicer one. Seems the first one was a bit girlish. One of his friends was on foot, so he got the girlish bike – after I un-girled it.

Hernando really wants the super fancy trick bike with the spin-around front fork and the radial-spoked wheel and the foot pegs on the axles. I’m making him earn that one.

All their other bicycles needed work. Done.

One of them looks the spitting image of me at that age. Except for my Norwegian Arctic pale skin.

Around 8 PM Hernando’s parents left for the grocery store and Hernando informed me I was officially babysitting him while his parents were gone. Thanks a lot. They were wonderful neighbors until now.

These kids notice everything. The Highway Patrol cruiser hanging from the rafters of my barn took some explaining. Always does.

All these little BMX bicycles come from BRC. Strangely, some perfectly adult burners ride these little things. And sometimes they get gifted to Elliot’s Bicycle Service. Now you know how they wind up.

Awwwww. Geeeee. Now you've done the impossible --making me feel embarrassed. Every one of us can participate in the community. "It takes a village...", you know. We just have to turn off the TV and step outside.

gaminwench wrote: building community, one bike at a time!

Now this... is a pretty cool thought. I do believe it works.And I ought to be able to build a @#$%^& metropolis. At last count I had 72 bicycles. Of course, most are junk, only good for parts.

I did not build that blue two-seater. It is a store-bought machine called RhoadesCar, after Dave Rhoades who invented it. They are built in Tennessee. It is one of the several orphaned contraptions that have accumulated in my barn thru no expense of mine. I failed to bring it to the Playa last year. This year it is assigned to a couple from Norway where the wife has a bad hip. They are expensive, yet relatively common. AntiM and HerLarry have one.

Elliot wrote:I did not build that blue two-seater. It is a store-bought machine called RhoadesCar, after Dave Rhoades who invented it. They are built in Tennessee. It is one of the several orphaned contraptions that have accumulated in my barn thru no expense of mine. I failed to bring it to the Playa last year. This year it is assigned to a couple from Norway where the wife has a bad hip. They are expensive, yet relatively common. AntiM and HerLarry have one.

Now git offa my lawn.

We do! Pricey buggers, but the cost has evened out over the years.

Larry added handles to the front of the frame, as that steering rod thingy in the front was too often used for lifting, and it bends. He needs to adjust the brakes each year out there, they act up. Ours is the 36 gears one, and will do 22mph on the open playa with two determined pedalers and the canopy off.

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My set of handlebars are completely decorative, something to hang onto, or put my feet up on, with a cup holder.

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I love the back deck. Bit of a booby trap though, you can't sit on the deck without someone in the seat, or the whole thing flips up. Hehe. The treasure chest holds a cooler, and we have a couple milk crates for coats and such. We have an umbrella mister system which clips to the canopy too. Like riding around in our own little dome.

We even have solar light up personalized plates on the rear. I think Larry puts more time into the rhoadescar than some people do into their camps.

We also have a single, but it needs work. I'm too short to pedal it comfortably.

We have the seat up as far as it can go, so drilling another hole is an option. I prefer to pedal straight down rather than recumbent, so we have a new boat seat ... need to fiddle with it so I can pedal it without my spine pinching and making my legs numb.